Prediction: The Digital Asset Market Will Cross the $1 Trillion Mark Before the end of 2018

...despite the demise of the ICO, says Team Ripple

The Digital Asset Market Will Surpass the $1 Trillion Mark in 2018

Team Ripple recently came out with their 2018 predictions for the digital asset space. According to the release, the Ripple team expects “the digital asset market to surpass the $1 trillion mark before year-end.” The growth is expected to be adequately supported by:

FOMO (fear of missing out) investors- the new and enthusiastic entrants into the digital asset space.

This is despite the fact that the company’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse sees 2018 as the year of the demise of the ICO (initial coin offering).

2017 Was the Birth of the ICO

“If 2017 was the birth of the ICO, 2018 will be its demise,” says team Ripple. With over $3.5 billion raised via ICOs (initial coin offerings) in 2017 alone, it was certainly the year of the ICO, with the largest amounts being raised by EOS ($324 million), Filecoin ($257 million), Tezos ($230 million), and Bancor ($152 million). November alone recorded a whopping aggregate of $743.2 million being raised via ICOs. Here’s a complete list of the 20 biggest ICOs to date.

Ripple Foresees 2018 as Being the Demise of the ICO

Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse has, on several occasions during the course of 2017, commented on the toxic nature of ICOs, warning those investing in them of getting burned — badly. Ripple sees ICO activity running out of steam over the first half of 2018, given the fact that many regulatory authorities are already cracking down on these offerings.

On September 3rd, Chinese regulators banned ICOs on virtual currency exchanges, stating that they have “seriously disrupted the economic and financial order.”

On September 29th, 2017, South Korea’s financial regulator prohibited domestic companies and startups from participating in ICOs.

On December 4th, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced it had obtained an emergency asset freeze to halt a fast-moving Initial Coin Offering (ICO) fraud that had raised up to $15 million from thousands of investors since August, by falsely promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month.

The Best Digital Assets Would Continue to Shine

That said, team Ripple doesn’t see the crypto asset space losing its luster. They see 2018 as a year that will “shine a spotlight on the best digital assets (tokens) with the strongest use case, backed by real, legitimate businesses.” Digital assets that solve real-world problems will emerge as winners while the rest, such as CryptoKitties, which the team sees as “half-baked attempts to find a use case for coins that never had a purpose to begin with,” could be seen as the big losers.